Poems

A Promise To An Angel


A story that I wrote when I was 10 -
Recrudescent!  The tale comes back again.
A little boy alone and very fat
Was bad at all athletics.  That was that.
He doddered home in tears and bleak despair.
Ironing (are mothers always there?)
His mother told him just behind a door
Was somebody that he was waiting for.
He went in, and there an angel stood.
Angels are essentially quite good.
She said, “I'll make first in every sport,
Providing you do not commit one tort.
You'll be strong and muscular.  But hear!
Never make athletics your career!”
The boy agreed.  He grew and he excelled,
With medals.  He kept growing, and impelled
By urges far too various to name,
He forgot his promise for the game.
He won every race except the last.
As he crossed the finish first, a blast
Of thunder cracked old heaven.  On the spot,
He became a fat a foolish tot.


1956/2013


Just A Spark


A legend or a myth that I wrote when
I was my parents' happy son of 10.
I've remembered two.  But there were four.
I doubt I'll versify a couple more.


An isolated boy
Playing in the wood
Found a firecracker
And thought that it was good.


He lit it with a match
And threw it on the ground.
It didn't move or sputter.
It didn't make a sound.


Thinking it was worthless,
He left it where it lay.
The ensuing conflagration
Blew his world away.


1958/2013

Kittens


No one with a kitten
Needs another person.
With birdlike glance they watch
Everything you do.
They leap onto your stomach
And do a little dance.
Is that love,
A retrospect of nursing,
Or something only nature understands?
Vertical they leap
To catch a fly against the window.
Settle where your arm bends,
In the crook they go to sleep.
And once they love you,
They will never stop.


9-2-13


Suicide


I have two friends who wish I were alive,
And four tame cats who wouldn't see the difference
Til they were locked in shelters, and destroyed.
My poesy, the beacon of my life,
A retroflective beacon, not a guide,
Would be forgotten, like a body gassed
And lying on the ground in Syria.
Those poems may be good.  It doesn't matter.
Words do not sustain longevity,
But whether what they're written on survives.
I won't die.  Unless a gentle nature
Decides to do me in.  And carry on.


9-2-13


The Ward


Coffee and crayons and hospital gowns!
The doctor said, “Tell them you're one of the clowns.”
They sit in the dayroom and stare at the wall,
Pace kicking cigarette butts down the hall.
Once every fortnight the doctor comes in
And doesn't say much.  You don't see him again.
A nurse with a little square table and vials
Takes your blood weekly and chatters and smiles.
There you will stay till your older or dead.
Something is horribly wrong with your head.
You wait for your dinner three times a day.
The older ones hurry.  Don't get in their way.
There's no one to listen and no one to tell
In this prolegomenon, prelude to hell.


9-2-13


Millay


I just read another
Sonnet of lost love
Written with the wing
Of a wounded dove.


Bittersweet romances
Glut her poetry,
Rapt and glorifying
Promiscuity.


9-1-13


Handicap


What I think is crazy.
What I know is wrong.
Do such wry opinions
Make a pretty song?


With a destiny uncharted
Beneath an empty sky,
I continue writing.
Reasons don't apply.


9-2-13


My name is Joseph Hart, and I have books on Amazon and Kindle.  The books on Amazon are $10 or less (I think some thick ones are $12.50), and the books on Kindle are $1, with a few big ones $1.50.  I recommend "Endymion Awake", "Poems Published In Amazon Magazine", "Ten Chaps" "Coleridge, Without Jesus", or "Fallen Idols".